Berkant Akgürgen was born on New Years Eve 1938 in Ankara, Turkey. At the age of 19, he formed his first band Üstün Poyrazoğlu Orkestrası. Later that year, the band changed their name to Jüpiter Kenteti – or Jupiter Quintets. After a stint in the military, he formed Vasfi Uçaroğlu Orkestrası.

Berkant recorded dozens of singles between 1966 and 1974, and many of the songs were collected on an album in 1974. In 1993, he attempted a comeback with an album called “Samanyolu ’93” – or “Milky Way ’93”. He died today – October 1st, 2012.

This song, which translates as “First Love” was originally recorded by Ajda Pekkan.

Just the other night, I was talking with a fellow record collector – err, I mean archivist – and he was lamenting about how record hunting – I mean researching, researching – has become more competitive and that the prices for these records – Sorry, research materials– has gotten out of control. There are more and more people searching for these unheard sounds. Due to onslaught of re-issues and compilations, as well as websites like this one, folks have been turned on to something they never knew even existed before.

Hell, I’m guilty. Only about five years ago, I had barely an inkling of what was out there. I had picked up a few compilations here and there, and then the next thing I know I’m blowing my whole paycheck on eBay. One of the first compilations that clued me in – if not the first – was Grey Past’s Turkish Delights.

Turkey seems to be the gateway drug– I mean country – for record collectors. For many, it seems to be where the record collecting bug emanates from – and for good reason, too. Turkey is quite unique due to the fact that, besides being crossroads between Europe and Asia, the population is 99.83%Muslim and yet they have a seculardemocracy. Add in a thriving music scene in the 60s and 70s that was fueled by annual Battle of the Bands– which were promoted and funded by the local newspaper. Thanks to all of these factors, there is a seemingly endless supply of amazing records from Turkey.

The same cultural shifts in Turkey that brought about Anatolian Rock, also gave birth to a film industry that was… Well, let’s just say produced some rather racy films for a country that is 99% Muslim. Known as seks filmler. these films – which ranged from soft- to mid-hardcorepornographic – were produced from the late1960s until the end of the 1980s. But if it were not for the country’s policy of secularism, or laïcité, these films would have most likely never have been made.

Apparently, it was a common view of film producers of the time that films were shot not as parts of a single work but as source material for production of multiple films. Erotic scenes, especially, were often cut and pasted to assemble new films from various parts of existing ones. This peculiar practice was called “parça” (“fragment”), and the term was extended into the movie theaters themselves to include the practice by the projectionists of inserting hardcore material, which was European most of the time, into Turkish erotic films.

Mavi Çocuklar, or Blue Boys, were the winners of 1967’s Altin Mikrofon contest. The contest, which translates as Golden Microphone, was held by Hürriyet – the largest newspaper in Istanbul. The contest was held from 1965 to 1968, and the records that were released as a result of the competition is one of the reasons why the TurkishRock / Beat scene flourished and has also been so well documented.

The winning song for Mavi Çocuklar was Develi Daylar. The title was in reference to the phrase “cek deveci develeri”, which translates as “cameldriver get the camels out of here”. So the story goes, the band built a large wooden camel to put on stage for their performance in the contest. But they had to take a taxi to where the concert was to be held, which was in the suburb of Bakırköy. So they strapped the camel to the top of their cab and off they went.

The band was more known as a dance band, playing “Samba-swing-oriental” music at the Istanbul Hilton. Their first single was released in 1965, and after their win of the Altin Mikrofon contest in 1967, the band “quietly disappeared”. During their brief existence, they had two singers – Okan Dincer and Marthen Yorgantz. Of the other members, the drummer went by the name “Tirtil” – which means new born butterfly – and the piano / organ player went by “Garbo”… Beyond that, not much is know about the band.

This week’s guest post is by Jonathan Ward. Much like myself, Jonathan is afflicted with a rare strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as “record collector-itis”. But his case is much more severe, being that he collects 78s. He has put this adversity to good use with the truly amazing Excavated Shellac. The writing on his site is consistently entertaining and well researched – and puts my barely coherent ramblings to shame. Be sure to check out his Dublab session – it’s the next best thing to having him come over to your house with a stack of 78s.

I was very happy when Stuart at Radiodiffusion asked me if I’d like to provide a guest post. First, because his blog is a fascinating source of hard to find international music, and second, because it brings me out of my little world of 78rpm records featured in my own Excavated Shellac. I thought I’d throw out an important Turkish single from the era of “Anadolu Pop” (Anatolian Pop) – the influential and groundbreaking style of Turkish rock which combined both psychedelic and progressive rock influences with traditional folkloric elements.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean the genre is tapped out. Turkey was a singles-based music industry until the mid-70s or so, and there are lots of artists that haven’t yet gone through the hipster reissue machine (Bariş Manço, for instance, hasn’t gotten his US compilation yet – though Madlib’s brother Oh No has been sampling him for quite a while). One of these is the short-lived Ağri Daği Efsanesi.

Ağri Daği Efsanesi was an early-70s collaboration lasting just two singles, between Nejat Teksoy, a member of the garage-y rock band Mavi Işiklar, and the legendary Murat Ses, keyboardist and original member of the renowned band Moğollar (“The Mongols”), widely considered the founding fathers of Anadolu Pop (and inventors of the term itself). To understand the origins of Anadolu Pop, the first two groundbreaking LPs by Moğollar would be the place to start – and Murat Ses arranged the bulk of those songs. Moğollar ‘s first LP, released by Guilde Internationale du Disque in France and titled Les Danses et Rythmes de la Turquie d’hier á aujourd’hui under the French version of their name, “Les Mogol,” was released in Turkey under the name Anadolu Pop, in fact. On it, psychedelic rock mixed with saz and davul, keyboards and organ mixed with Anatolian fiddle playing – this was an album that helped spawn a whole movement.

Murat Ses stayed with Moğollar until about 1972. Sometime around this time he formed Ağri Daği Efsanesi, named after a track on the first Moğollar LP and meaning “The Legend of Mount Ararat,” while also contributing to singles by Bariş Manço (Lambaya Püf De) and Edip Akbayram (Kaşlarin Karasina) throughout the 70s. He eventually left Turkey in the late 1970s and moved to Linz, Austria, where he received both a Masters and a Doctorate in Economics. He continues to release music today.

The roots of traditional music in Turkey spans across centuries to a time when the Seljuk Turks colonized Anatolia and Persia in the 11th century and contains elements of both Turkic and pre-Turkic influences. Much of its modern popular music can trace its roots to the emergence in the early 1930s drive for Westernization.

With the absorbance of immigrants from various regions the diversity of musical genres and musical instrumentation also expanded. Turkey has also seen documented folk music and recorded popular music produced in the ethnic styles of Armenian, Greek, Polish, Azeri and Jewish communities, among others.

Born in Adana in 1936, Erol Büyükburç began his career as what can be called “highschool pop”. Erol mixed more classic Anatolian pop with Western music, with influences ranging from Elvisto The Ventures, and was known for performing commercial ballroom shows. Although his career started before the Altin Mikrofon bands of the late Sixties, and even before Erkin Koray’s first single, Erol is considered kitschy by most collectors of Turkish music and is generally overlooked. Erol passed away in 2003.